Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs Read Online Free PDF Page B

them.’
    Dad pulled a face and said, ‘Did you know?’
    John replied, ‘Of course, ninety-six.’
    Dad knew then that he was going to lose his elder son to a boarding school in Sussex. Shortly afterwards, a letter came from the school confirming his place and instructions on when and how to get there. He was to go to Victoria station on the appointed day and join up with the other masters and boys on the train to Horsham.
    When the day came, there was hardly a dry eye in the house – apart from mine, as I had no idea what was going on. He took his leave of Mum at the prefab and Dad accompanied him to Victoria station on the 38 bus. Grasping his small attaché case in his hand, John made his way to the appointed platform and was caught up in a vast milling crowd of old hands and new boys, many of the latter in tears, along with their parents. John joined his group and Dad hung around, waiting for the inevitable guard’s whistle. It came all too soon and the train slowly but surely chugged out of the station. Dad waited until the train finally disappeared from sight then made his way back to the bus stop with a very empty feeling inside. It was the end of an era. In fact, more so than anyone imagined at the time as, apart from holidays, John never again lived at home, eventually going straight on to university and then to work, sharing a flat with a friend before getting married.
    Bad as this was for my parents, the trauma wasn’t over yet. When John came home for the Christmas holidays, he told them he didn’t want to go back and didn’t like it at school. Mum would have pulled him out there and then, but, in spite of wanting nothing better than to have John back home, Dad knew that this was a wonderful opportunity for him and felt it was essential he should see it through. Two wretched people left the prefab on a bleak January morning to catch the bus to Victoria. In fact, it turned out that an older boy was bullying John and this was the main cause of his unhappiness. A bad enough thing normally, but being on your own and miles away from your loved ones must have made it a hundred times worse. When the problem was eventually sorted out, John took to life at Christ’s Hospital with great relish and never looked back.
    It wasn’t long before I too was to experience a mini-trauma of my own when I suddenly found myself parted from Mum and plonked in front of a desk in a classroom with about thirty other children. A woman was introduced to us as Miss Leach who, apparently, was to be my teacher, whatever that was.
    Yes, schooldays had arrived. On the morning they did, I was blissfully unaware of the life-changing event about to overwhelm me. That fateful day, Mum got me ready and took me out (I suppose I thought we were going shopping or something). Instead, we entered this big building with hundreds of other children, went into a large room where I was placed behind a desk while Mum stood by the door, waving… and then left. I had never been parted from her before so I just leaned forward, put my head in my hands and sobbed. I’m sureit must have been just as hard – if not harder – for Mum to leave me in that state.
    At lunchtime, when she came to pick me up, I’m sure she must have been very worried about what she would find and how I was bearing up but she was in for a bit of a shock as I told her I couldn’t wait to return to school. Miss Leach was reading us a story and I was eager to get back to hear the rest of it!
    And so, with school now about to play a major role in my everyday life, a whole new era of growing up in London’s East End in the 1950s and 1960s began.

CHAPTER TWO
MARBLES, CONKERS AND ‘BASH-UPS’
    A normal school day usually started with Mum waking me up. Getting out of bed could be a real chore in the winter. Without central heating and with our main source of warmth just the open coal fire in the living room, it could